Laura Linney keeps up fast pace with Jindabyne

When an actor turns up in three or more movies in the same year, it's usually the result of a scheduling fluke -- work done earlier was held and now it looks like they're making films all the time.

Laura Linney is the exception to the rule. She really is making movies all the time.

"I like to work," she confessed. "I like to act. It's what I'm trained to do."

She's returning to theaters now in the Australian drama Jindabyne, which opened Friday at the Shadowood 16 and Sunrise 11 theaters in Broward. It's the second of her five movies this year (Breach was the first), and that doesn't even take into account her stage work, which earned her a 2005 Tony Award nomination for starring in Sight Unseen on Broadway.

Jindabyne -- the title comes from the town where the story takes place -- came to Linney via Anthony LaPaglia, who went Down Under to star in the 2001 mystery Lantana for director Ray Lawrence.

"I've known Anthony for years, and I trust his judgment," Linney said. "He called me up, said Ray was going to send me a script and told me that I had to do it. He said that I would love working with Ray -- and he was right."

Lawrence films in one take. You either get it the first time, or you don't get it at all. A lot of actors find that pressure unnerving, but Linney thrived on it. It reminded her of working with Clint Eastwood, who directed her in Mystic River and Absolute Power.

"That's pretty much the way Clint works, too -- although sometimes he will give you a second take," she said. "Ray does everything only once."

She plays the wife of one of four men who hike into a remote valley to go fly fishing for the weekend. The men find the body of a slain woman, but instead of making the half-day trek out of the valley, they wait until the weekend is over to tell the police.

When the townspeople hear about the decision to keep fishing, many of them, including Linney's character, are appalled. Things get worse when it's learned that the woman was black, and the four white fishermen are accused of racism. Hoping to make amends for her husband's callous behavior, Linney tries to reach out to the victim's family.

The movie is based on a short story, but Linney found little help there to build her character.

"It's a really short, short story," she said. "It's only about five pages long. So we had to rely mainly on what was in the script."

She and Lawrence worked together to create a back story for the character, whose name is Claire.

"A lot of directors don't want to think about that stuff," she said. "They figure that it's my problem [as the actor]. But we spent a lot of time tracking the whole story. Claire's flawed; everyone in the story is. But she's trying to make things that are wrong right."

She likes that the story ends on an ambiguous note.

"I've thought a lot about what happens to Claire, and I don't really know," she said.

Linney's future is a lot easier to predict: It will involve working.

"I'm shooting a miniseries on John Adams right now," she said of a project in which she plays Abigail Adams, the president's wife. "Then I'm going to do a play. After that, I'll have to see. Things pop up."